We spent the first half of Thanksgiving weekend in Bellingham, which was very nice. I read 2.5 of the three books I brought, but my unread bookshelf does still not have a place to put books. Then I came home Saturday and sent Katrina to the apartment office pick up my box of three new books that came Wednesday afternoon. Rachel: 0, unread books: 1.
Every time I go to the Starbucks in Bellingham, I am horrified and amused at how long they take to do anything there. I stopped there on my way home yesterday morning, and there was a huge crowd in there. They had four people working, but it still took a million years. I was trying to figure out what they were doing to be so slow, because it *looked* like they were hustling. I waited a long time to place my order, and then a long time after that to actually get my coffee.
I watched the guy steam my milk, labelled clearly 'whole milk', even though I always get nonfat. Then he watched me watching him pour it into my cup, then he boldly called out 'nonfat extra hot mocha'. I took it, and it wasn't even extra hot. It was barely warm. I thought about demanding it to be made hotter, but decided it really wasn't worth the hassle, and drank it fast, before it turned downright cold.
Today, the girls and I went to the Starbucks in Redmond. The line was pretty long, and we waited for a little bit. They had two people working there, and in spite of that, I got my coffee almost right after I ordered it. And it was even hot enough to burn my tongue a little bit on the first drink. Not quite hot enough for me, but not bad.
In a reckless act of home improvement tonight, I moved my tv shelf over about a foot and a half, an endeavor which required me to take the tv off of the stand, which required me to unscrew the cable, which required me to try about every single tool in my tool box, until finally I was able to get it off.
The girls hooked up the tv in the living room to the cable, because I told them I wasn't recording the Simpsons on tivo, but something else instead. They watched it all with a very fuzzy screen, because they didn't have it set up correctly all the way through. I fixed it right after it was over, and they were appropriately impressed. Am not going to tell them that Tivo actually recorded the Simpsons after all.
Katrina and I made an online advent calendar today. She seemed a little bit interested, but got bored when I was copying and pasting a bunch of stuff. We were pleased with the finished product, though. Abby worked on her pillow for school today. She did a great job cutting everything out and sewing it together, using the sewing machine. She still has some work to do, but it looks like it's going to be stunning when it's complete.
Tonight has passed in a frenzy of food preparation.
Well, okay, if I count up the hours I've spent tonight, probably more of them have passed sitting at the computer while I half-watch Stargate episodes I've already seen than have passed with me in the kitchen, but I have made a bunch of stuff.
And while cooking, I've come to the realization that I really don't like following recipes. It's always better if I just sort of make things up as I go. The downside to this is that when I make something really delicious, it's often hard to repeat.
Tonight called for making a pot of soup and two kinds of dessert. Soup is easy, especially shopping at Trader Joe's, where they have so much good stuff pre-chopped and ready to go that the soup practically makes itself.
Next on my list was gingerbread shortbread. Two things I love, and as I was planning on making plain shortbread, when I stumbled across a recipe for gingerbread shortbread, I couldn't resist. I mixed it up, put it in the oven, and waited eagerly for it to be done.
Unfortunately, it was sort of speckled, and while the recipe called for it to be taken out when it was brown around the edges, it wasn't apparent to me that it was brown around the edges until it was almost black around the edges. When I took it out and my sharpest knife wouldn't cut it, I knew that there was no way that this gingerbread shortbread was going anywhere but down the garbage disposal. I did taste a bit from the center, where it was the least hard, and decided that while gingerbread and shortbread are two great things, they are not two great things that go great together.
I mixed up the brownies, which was easy, as I made the same brownies earlier in the week. (Not following the recipe. The recipe for these brownies is called 'triple chocolate brownies' but I only had one kind of chocolate the other day, so now they are 'a whole lot of one kind of chocolate brownies'.) While I'm doing this, I'm trying to find a different shortbread recipe, but am not coming up with anything that seems appropriate.
I page through my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, and see a recipe for lemon bars, but I'm not happy with the pan size, so I pass on it. Then I remember the fancy Williams Sonoma lemon dessert cookbook I got over the summer and while I've spent much time drooling over the pictures, have never actually made anything from it.
I find a recipe for lemon shortbread. Undeterred by my previous failure with flavored shortbread, I pull out the bag of lemons I handily have in the fridge and start grating lemon zest. I need a quarter cup of lemon zest, which is really quite a lot. After making four lemons all naked and white, I decide I'm tired of grating lemon zest, and figure that what I have will do. It's not quite to the top of the measuring cup, but it's not too far off, either.
The recipe calls for processing the sugar and lemon zest in a food processor, to more finely shred the zest. I decide this step can be easily skipped, and also decide to skip the step where the butter gets whipped up separately. That sounds too hard, and would require moving too many things and plugging things in and I have my pastry cutter right here, which seems like it will do just fine. This is what I get for making recipes from a fancy cookbook. They want you to use fourteen different appliances! (Probably all conveniently available at Williams Sonoma.)
I throw in my unfood-processed lemon zest, and am pleased to realize that while the recipe calls for 1/4 cup, I've actually been measuring it into a 1/3 cup measuring cup, so being a bit short is just perfect! I blithely substitute a few squeezes of lemon juice for the teaspoon of lemon oil the recipe calls for, and mix everything together with my pastry cutter. Which works great, by the way.
The book says that I am supposed to form the dough into four five-inch rounds and put them on two cookie sheets, but what I really want to do is put them in two 9" round pans. I do some quick mental math, after spending a little bit trying to remember the formula for the area of a circle, and decide that the difference between four 5" circles and two 9" circles is too great, and that I have tempted the kitchen gods enough for one recipe.
I did consider that my burnt offering of gingerbread shortbread might appease them, but by this point, I'd tasted the lemon shortbread dough and I knew I didn't want to mess the baking part up. Yum.
They are now in the oven, and I'm carefully watching the clock, so that I don't burn two things in one night.
One other kitchen related tidbit: I asked the girls the other night if they missed having a microwave, as I am now at the point where I never even think about it. Abby said she didn't at all, but Katrina said she did miss it. When I poked a little further and asked her why, she said that she didn't have anything to use as a timer now. I guess we need a kitchen stopwatch! That would sure take up less counter space than a microwave would.
also known as, things that happen when I don't pay enough attention
So, as I'm trying to get to Arlington, the birthplace of my paternal grandmother, I am daydreaming and feeling far too sure of myself as far as directions go, and I see a highway sign, so I follow it. Instead of proceeding to Arlington, I end up heading towards Monroe, the birthplace of my maternal grandmother. I got turned around, but I did feel a bit silly.
Note to self: If you're not going to check the weather report, at least look out the window. Twice in the last two days I have found myself dressed inappropriately for the weather.
Sunday, I was lounging about in shorts and a sweatshirt, procrastinating as far as cleaning house or getting ready for the girl scouts to come, and decided I needed to go get coffee and do my other errands. I grabbed my purse, slipped on my sandals, and jetted out the door. So spontaneous, I was. It was, of course, pouring down rain. I shrugged and carried on with my plans. It was a bit damp, and a bit cold, and I did end up stopping at Safeway, then getting back in my car and driving down to the Starbucks which was only halfway down the parking lot.
Tonight, as I was walking back to work from my car, I was surprised to find that it was raining, and as I had had a moderate-to-severe clothes trauma this morning, I had only managed to leave the house wearing jeans and a shirt, and no jacket. (Trust me, it was an effort to find a pair of pants and a shirt, a jacket was just asking too much.)
Apparently it's going to be raining quite a bit in the next few days. I'll try to wear a jacket when I go to work tomorrow.
Another thing that happened when I wasn't paying attention is I got all wimpy. I led the girl scouts in about 10 minutes of yoga yesterday, and was then surprised to find that pretty much every single muscle in my body was sore today. Apparently I need to do that more often.
Or less often. I haven't decided which!
I made this up the other day, when I was shopping at Trader Joe's and wanted to be able to make something I could eat for the rest of the week. What I was not expecting is that Abby would eat any of it, (it had corn in it) but she did!
Ingredients:
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
1 package of shredded carrots
1 bag pre-cubed winter squash
2 big cans of tomatoes
1 bag frozen corn
A handful of fresh basil
A half-cup or so of white wine
1 Tablespoon oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
Red pepper flakes to taste (If you like things spicy -- otherwise, leave these out.)
Directions:
Smash garlic and throw in a big pot over medium, along with some olive oil.
Cut up onion and throw in pot
Add carrots to pot, too.
Let the vegetables cook a bit and if necessary, cut up the squash pieces into smaller pieces.
Throw the squash pieces in the soup too.
Let everything cook for a few minutes.
Tear or chop up the basil.
Add in the rest of your ingredients - the two cans of tomatoes, the corn, the basil, and all the seasonings.
Let everything cook until the squash is cooked through.
It makes a huge pot, and takes very little time to put everything together. I highly recommend it!
Sometimes it might be handy to be able to read my cats' minds, I could find out all sorts of interesting reasons why they do what they do. Because I can't, though, I just have to wonder endlessly at their seemingly bizarre behavior.
For instance, Molly has a strange habit of staring at me. Last night was fairly typical. I was in bed, watching tv, and she jumped up on the bed, obviously looking for some attention. Instead of coming and sitting on my lap, though, she came and sat beside me in her best Egyptian Cat Goddess pose and looked at me. This went on for quite a while. Eventually, she came and sat halfway on my lap, but didn't want to commit to being there entirely.
Another strange thing about them is how they choose where to sleep. Often they sleep on the bed, which is to be expected. If there's a towel or a piece of clothing or anything else on the bed, they always sleep on top of that. Last night I almost tripped over both of them, because Molly was sleeping on a rug that was on the floor in front of the bed, and as soon as I recovered from nearly stepping on Molly, I almost tripped over YumYum, who was sleeping right beside my bed on the floor.
They still insist on jumping in the tub as soon as my shower is over, too. I had the bathroom door closed this morning while I showered, but when I opened it I found two cats on the floor right in front of it, just waiting for me to hurry up and get out of the way.
My children are a little bit deprived. We never just go to the mall, it's always an adventure of near-epic proportions.
The problem really lies in the location of the mall. It's right along the Sammamish River Trail, which provides so many possibilities for combining some shopping with some other form of recreation.
When we lived at our old house, we could walk down the Bridle Trails trail to a little park, then continue on down the hill to Marymoor, where we could walk up to the mall by the river trail. That was about a 5 mile round trip walk.
Now, we're actually closer to the mall, but the road is not fit for pedestrians right now as it's in the middle of a big construction project. They, of course, started this project right about the time I got my bike, which has seriously hampered my bike riding plans. But at any rate, we couldn't walk all the way to the mall.
So we drove down to the Starbucks that's in the shopping center with the QFC and the new Staples store, got some coffee, and the girls got cups of whipped cream. Their cups actually had a little bit of hot chocolate in them too, but they were mostly interested in the whipped cream.
After the coffee break, we cut across the parking lot to the trail, and walked away from the mall for about a mile, then came back and walked back towards the mall, where we had lunch at a pizza place that had board games glued to the ceiling. Then we hit the bookstore and fortified ourselves with cow chip cookies for the walk back to the car.
The girls had been pretty full of energy when we first started our walk, but I had managed to get them walking far enough to wear them down pretty well, and now they are collapsed on my bed watching the Lizzie McGuire movie. I have to admit, I'm not feeling exactly bursting with energy, either. But I am pleased that we got a couple of good walks in this weekend!
After lounging in bed until 10am today, and then still not really getting up and going until 1pm, when we made a 'morning' coffee run, it was about 4:30 before we really went out and did anything.
We walked up the hill on 40th to a little park about a mile from home. We walked past the campaign signs for Christine Discoe. Being disco obsessed, Abby is always excited whenever she sees a Discoe campaign sign. Because it's after the election, I told her that she could probably take it to keep on the way home. She was most excited by this, and we continued on to the park, and the girls played until shortly after five, then it was starting to get dark.
As we were walking home, pinching campaign signs, Abby pointed out the moon. It was mostly dark, but glowing at the bottom, and they asked if it was an eclipse. I said no, of course not, but that it sure did look neat, and we talked about where we were going to go have dinner (Chili's, I made an executive decision, because I've been wanting a chiliburger for days.)
When I got home, I went online, and practically the first thing I saw was that there was a lunar eclipse tonight. I found a chart that showed the various effects at different times, and realized that we'd walked home facing the moon at the very peak of the eclipse. Shows what I know about astronomy. Apparently watching lots of Stargate doesn't make me an expert. Who knew?
My chiliburger totally hit the spot, and we walked around the mall after dinner, caught a couple of songs from a South American band, got myself some new jeans -- which I had been needing desperately, as most of my pants are capri pants, and I can only wear sandals with capri pants, and it's been awfully cold lately. It was a lot warmer today than it had been, but once the sun went down, it got really cold again.
Abby has spent the day working on building her Amazon wishlist. She's quite discouraged that most of the items she wants are out of stock. She still has a ways to go before she catches up with the size of Katrina's wishlist, though, who has more than 90 items on hers.
Abby was happy that I found the big clear quilt-measuring rulers. I knew I had them, and had seen them recently, but when I went to look for them, I couldn't find them anywhere. I searched through my closet, through my piles of books that are stacked up, waiting for my brother (hint, hint!) to come down and take me to get new bookshelves, and anywhere else I could think of, but no rulers. Then, this morning, in a fit of inspiration, I remembered where they were.
Where were they? Why, in the wrapping paper box, of course. Where else would a person keep them? So tomorrow we start Abby's pillow for school. It's a very grand pillow plan, with pink and green squares, and her name, appliqued on in silver.